Beauty, Mercy, Justice

Palm Sunday

* God has a perfect plan for your life. But it is as incomprehensible as He Is.

* Human constructs can illuminate or veil reality. Worse, many of the illuminative ones, even the ones not planted by human hands, can become veils and usually do.

* Any ‘theology’ that believes that most humans are going to suffer for all eternity is not worthy of consideration, for the ‘God’ it portrays is not worthy of worship: a total failure and cruel, too.

* In fact, the holy Being we call ‘God’ sets a very low standard. If that is not true, if most people are hell-bound, I might as well give up. And so should you, if you possess any self-knowledge at all.

* Fortunately, we can look at the ones he has chosen in sacred history and see how condescending ‘God’ is: aside from His Mother, it is a collection of knaves and knuckleheads. Which should give us hope. Universalism? Not quite; one must leave room for human freedom, even the craziest kind that would reject Love for Self, even when that Self, by the choice, is reduced to a cold hard turd of a thing.

* In fact, if that most noxious of theologies, Calvinism, is true, we may as well ‘curse God and die’, for not only is He worthy of a curse, but we are without hope.

* Oh, except for the ‘elect’. Who are in for one Hell of a surprise.

* When I was younger I thought I was born in the wrong age. This is not an uncommon thing for romantics. And I did not like ‘modern’ science when I was in school; whatever Einstein was doing, high school science when I was a kid in the 60s was rationalist and mechanistic, and ran entirely against the mythopoetic approach to reality that came naturally to me. And anthropocentric: the assumption was that Man was about to conquer the natural world, make it sit up and beg. Not now; science if anything reveals a universe infinitely more mysterious and intricate than ever we could have imagined. And ultimately more beautiful and incomprehensible and, well, humbling. The age of scientism is over, as mysticism and science merge more and more.

* Meanwhile, ‘traditionalist’ Catholics have produced a documentary, by splicing together segments of interviews with physicists, taken out of context, promoting …. geocentrism.

* Me, I had another half-fast Lent. I am no longer a super Catholic, let alone a super Byzantine Catholic. I observed only the minimal ecclesial ‘fast’, like the average Catholic that I am.

* But I have three teenagers (four, if you count my precocious 11 year old, Maria), and that is plenty of penance, thank you. Plus, I just went through a five month period of intense physical deprivation. It was called ‘the worst winter ever’. What? It was imposed, not willed? So are all the best fasts.

* For what it is worth, I have pondered my sinfulness more this Lent than I ever did when I was observing all the traditional ascetic rules. Whole days I have spent walking around, realizing that I have been an ungrateful asshole more often than not, and full of pride to boot. And I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut when I should, engaging in fruitless arguments and general smartassedness.

* ‘Oh Lord and Master of my life, keep from me the spirit of indifference, despondency, lust for power and idle chatter. Instead, give to your servant the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love. My Lord and King, give me the grace to be aware of my sins, without judging my brothers and sisters. For You are blessed, now and forever, unto ages of ages. Amen.’

Jonathan: I hope that is not a serious question. If it is, boy are you in for it.

As for those saints: the Catholic Church has canonized a lot of assholes, not for their assholiness, but for their holiness, such as it was. I am convinced that in the divine plan it is enough not to be as bad as the worst, or as bad as you could have been. And every human template is flawed, and even in private revelation there is a lot of the presumptions of the seer in the telling of the vision or locution. If ‘God’ does not succeed in redeeming most of his creation He is a failure. But that is not as bad as the Calvinist god, who creates most humans for Hell, for His, you know, ‘glory’. That is the god of sociopaths and misanthropes. TULIP, my ass.

Thanks for your response. What do you mean by ‘most’? In my mind any conception of God that involves a quantitative standard of measurement will necessarily produce a monster of a deity, whether 49% or 0.0001% end up in hell. Perhaps even a worse one than that of Calvinism.

If you are indeed serious, let me set you straight: toddlers are darling. Their woes are simple, and their questions profound. They love you uncritically and unconditionally; you can do no wrong, and they believe whatever you tell them, a thing I have always taken seriously, to the point of never lying about Santa and the Easter Bunny or the rest. Toddlers are easily comforted, lovable and cute, even when they are being difficult.

Okay, I am here to say that the experience is not the same for everyone. I have 4 teenagers in the house, and you could not pay me enough money to go back to the days of a houseful of toddlers and babies (our oldest was 4 1/2yo when we had #4). Those were very, very hard days for me. If I am having a bad day, all I have to to is remember how hard things used to be, and suddenly my day is much brighter.

Give me the teenagers any day of the week.

This is not to say parenting teens is easy. Just that different stages are hard for different people. So much depends on your own personality as well as that of your kids. I am loving life far more these days than I ever did when they were all young, but my husband, a true baby-lover, would probably tell you another story.

He got us through the baby/toddler years, and I am carrying us through the teen stage.

Boy, did I feel like the Bad Catholic back in those days, when all the young moms were gushing about the wonders of motherhood, and all I could think was that I was barely one call away (if that) from a stint in the nearest psych hospital any day of the week. I am feeling somewhat vindicated now, though, because most of those same moms stopped the gushing a long time ago, but I am just now coming into my own as a mother. Funny how these things work out sometimes.

Yes, I suppose Bad Catholics would prefer the company of adolescents. Us former Super Catholics are, you know, all childlike and such and prefer little ones. Hey, did Christ ever say ‘suffer the adolescents to come unto me”? Or ‘Unless you become like an adolescent you will not enter the kingdom of heaven”?

Actually, I get along fairly well with my teens these days. It just took a few years of acclimation to get the hang of it.

To tell the truth, I would like it to be ‘all’. But I cannot reconcile that with what I have seen of humans (not to mention with what we know has been revealed, which is at the least ambivalent). But then, I have only seen the exterior behavior, plus St Thomas says every human act, however depraved it may appear, is for the sake of a perceived good.

And part of me thinks that losing any of creation would mark failure. I would say that if .0001% made it that would mark a pretty incompetent Creator, and an abysmal Redeemer. Even 49% would suck at anything except baseball batting averages.

I have been struggling to hold onto faith at all this Lent. It gets to the point every once in a while when it seems like it’s all going to fall apart.

I don’t know where I even belong. Which would be bad enough if I were a single person but with a family tagging along/dragging me along, it seems like a constantly urgent problem.

I do know that I can’t live with this idea of a God who would throw us away, though. That is a huge thing for me right now. I can’t stand it, for all the reasons you said so well. And I can’t live with the idea of a God who is some kind of accountant, applying fines and credits and juggling the books.

I was searching for something on google the other day and came across a traddy blog where this guy was having what looked like, with my suddenly distant perspective, a complete mental breakdown. A hissy fit, but on steroids. He was sneering with great passion about how “heretics” and most especially Protestants and contraceptors and divorcees and homosexuals could look forward to horrific tortures in the afterlife. He went into a great deal of loving detail about those tortures, and it turned my stomach.

There’s a whole section of the “devout, orthodox” populace who lives like this, thinks like this, talks like this. When someone like Fr. Z gets on a roll, he’s not far from that same spirit. They’re all very sure of everything.

I look out the window, and there’s a dad and a kid walking to the ice cream shop. In this city, odds are good they haven’t set foot in a church in years if ever, are spiritual but not religious, probably not baptized.

These are the people these…well, these fanatical freaks…fantasize about being tortured for eternity.

That is not from God.

Then in a discussion about infant communion on First Things, I see a catechist casually drop in the “fact” that at age 7, kids can commit “mortal sins.”

I can’t believe a word of this. Not even part of a word. None of it.

I don’t care where the chapter and verse are in canon law. It is false.

This is why it seems to me that there has to be some kind of postmortem choice for each person to make – because absolute desolation can only be an appropriate consequence of a choice made with perfect culpability, which requires perfect knowledge and freedom of will. We have neither of those while we live on Earth.

As for numbers, surely if God did the saving then all men are saved, but if men are free then all men could refuse that salvation, so I could just as easily believe the number of saints is very small or very large. Large I hope because while I know that God will carry me to everlasting life despite all my flaws, I also know that I am bad at choosing self-sacrifice (which partially constitutes what salvation/deification is) even when I know it’s for my own good. But even if all chose Self over Love, I would count it as a victory because without Christ there would have been no choice available. Giving us that choice, even if we all choose badly, is more loving than binding us to Him against our wills for all eternity would have been. However I agree with the feeling that no amount of sin during life could “earn” one damnation if God is really God and Christ was really a Savior. Rather I think maybe our sinning and our loving prepare us for that final perfect choice that I expect. Those who lived saintly lives just that much less of themselves to still give up, while those who have lived selfishly have the whole bitter pill of ego to swallow and pass, or cling to if they choose. Well, that’s my guess anyway because it’s the only thing that makes sense to me.

Zeb: I don’t want to get all pious and stuff, but do you know of the Divine Mercy revelations of St Faustina, the 20th century Polish nun? She said that the Love of Christ is revealed to every soul at death, and it is given the choice of Love or Self. I have always intuited something like that, that one is confronted with the reality of the incomprehensible being we call ‘God’, who is pure Love, at death. That would be perceived as bliss by those who love God, purifying fire by those who sorta love God (like me) and pure torment by those consumed with self and hate.

Hmm, yeah I’ve always avoided all those revelations and apparitions and things because I have yet to read the whole of the Bible, let alone the great works of the Fathers or the Philokalia, etc, and it seems to be the overly superstitious and fanatical of Catholics who obsess over them. But recommendations of St. Faustina have been coming at me from such an odd variety of sources over the last year or two that maybe I’ll have to delve into her stuff.

Generally a good policy to steer away from such things, but this one is the exception. I take a pass on a lot of the cultural stuff that attaches itself to the Divine Mercy revelations, including especially the saccharine images (there are also good icons available), but there is real substance there which can undo a lot of the semi-Jansenist crap from pre-VII. And not least it is eastern in its sensibilities, from the repeated prayer, which echoes the Jesus prayer, to the thrice-holy hymn that concludes the prayers…. I haven’t prayed it in a long time, but that part about the revelation of divine love at the hour of death sticks with me.

“* Any ‘theology’ that believes that most humans are going to suffer for all eternity is not worthy of consideration, for the ‘God’ it portrays is not worthy of worship: a total failure and cruel, too.”

The problem with this to me is that God has guaranteed that the good will suffer. And that learning to suffer seems to be the entire point of life.

It is those who avoid suffering that we call evil. What suffering does a dictator do? None. What suffering does a wall street fat cat do? None.

Buddha had it right. The cause of suffering is the expectation that we deserve any better at all.

Love or self, that’s the right choice, and the choice is presented to all. But avoidance of suffering is self, not love. Love requires suffering.

There is suffering and there is suffering. There is nothing redemptive, by definition, in the suffering of hellfire. A ‘god’ whose Creation ends up with the vast majority of the souls he created suffering forever, with no hope or meaning, is a total flop.

Bullshit, Theodore. That assumes the worst of bad intentions for the atheist. It is more likely that he hates not the divine, but some distorted idea of the divine that he has picked up somewhere in life. Atheists hate idols that they think are ‘god’.

One way to think of it that I’ve found helpful: I think it’s an error to refer to Hell as a “punishment,” per se. Purgatory can be called punishment because it has an ultimately redemptive effect, but the same can’t be said of Hell. The only way Hell makes any sense at all to me is as a state that people freely choose for themselves–the notion that “the door to Hell is locked from the inside” and what not. The reason that it’s tempting to view this idea as a “cop-out” of sorts is that it’s hard to fathom in theory why anyone, given full knowledge and free choice, would choose eternal separation from God. But then, on a practical level, I look at how often I continue to do things that I know are not good for me and don’t make me happy, when I know with certainty that doing the right thing would make me happier (not just in the next life, but in the here and now), and I begin to understand how the notion of “choosing Hell” really isn’t too far-fetched. It’s sometimes much easier to be miserable than it is to change, and if that’s true in this life, I can see how it could be true when we face eternity.

Very true, fellow sinner. Most of us who are honest can understand choosing that which we know to be a lesser good for the immediate gratification. But to choose that, when the Reality of the Absolute, revealed as Love, is shown to us? I don’t think too many souls, if Sr Faustina’s account is true, would choose Self. But we have to admit it is possible that some will reject Holiness and persist in Assholiness. I am working on a post about Hell as the Asshole Corner of the Cosmos, and how the souls in that Corner are thoroughly enjoying themselves, though the blessed would consider their state to be torment. And vice versa. Stay tuned….

Oh, and I do not see what you call ‘purgatory’ as a punishment at all. That is an anthropomorphism, a human construct of very limited value.

I find it hard to believe that very many would reject Divine Love if it is revealed to them at their last hour. Many, many of those we see as evil are broken and hurt, and very many of them have lived lives that would warp any one of us. I would like to think that there are few that would reject He Who Is, when He is revealed beyond all concepts and human constructs. It is not impossible, but I think it unlikely.

Nice post and good comments. As a dad with seven kids, my experience is similar: the toddlers are darling most of the time (I have never understood the reference to “terrible twos” — I’ve always found two’s pretty terrific), teens are penance much of the time.

I also think Two is wonderful. I do believe in the Therrible Threes, though. We have had a couple of kids who were totally sweet until three, at which point they became ornery and destructive (also, still sweet, of course). This coincided with a new baby, so I do not know if that is the reason or something inherent in Three…

dan, I just finished an incredible very obscure work called The Meditations on the Tarot. I cannot recommend it enough. It explores all these issues, salvation, synthesis of science and mysticism, love, sin and the cosmos as a series of spiritual exercises based on the tarot cards. the author, himself a convert had the book published anonymously after his death. with an afterward by Hans Urs Von Balthazar. (As a side note, he does have a few theological hang ups, one being reincarnation, but otherwise it is probably the deepest work I have ever read.).

Yes, Anna, I heard of that book years ago; I believe I picked it up once and paged through it. I was put off by the reincarnation thing, and wary because of the Tarot’s associations. But I may give it a second chance, based on your rave review.

The Tarot’s occult associations are very recent and skin deep. Originally it was Italian Catholic, not Romany Gypsy, as can be seen in the Major Arcana cards for those of us who know Church history (for instance, the Hanged Man is clearly St. Peter).

Yes the cards have really rich Catholic symbolism. If nothing else read the arcanum of The Hermit. It was my personal favorite. Although the Sun was pretty amazing too.
The book is not easy. It took me six months to read but it painted the faith in a fresh light for me since it shows precisely how the pagan world encountered Christ and focuses on the the rich symbolism that nourished the faithful in the pre-reformation world. If you read Von Balthazar’s afterward first it also gives you a bit of help in sifting the good from the silly reincarnation bits, (which are honestly only like fifteen pages out of the 600 pages in the whole book. ) Anyway I’ll stop trying to oversell it now.